"In these parts, there's a subculture of people who go on these long trips into the middle of nowhere, but sometimes we forgot how dangerous it can be," Gerald Lemoine, mayor of a small town near Matagami, told the Montreal Gazette.

The rescued canoeist began his adventure July 16, Coulombe said. It wasn't until three months later, on October 21, that his family called authorities because too long had passed without Lavoie's return.

Rescuers in a helicopter finally spotted Lavoie on Wednesday, but they could not safely land at that spot, Coulombe said. So officers had to hike in to pick him up and carry him more than a mile to the chopper.

Lavoie's condition was such that he was barely able to speak and at first couldn't even drink water, the Gazette reported.

Had he spent another day or two in the elements, he would have starved to death, police spokesman Ronald McInnis said.

The man had lost half of his body weight, he said.

It was Lavoie's German shepherd who scared the bear away on the day of the attack, but the dog did not survive the ordeal, McInnis said.

"Up there, in the Canadian shield, there's little plant life to live off, so he would have been slowly, painfully dying when they found him. It's an amazing feat that he was able to keep himself alive this long with almost no equipment," survival instructor Caleb Musgrave told the Gazette.

"When you start to go hungry, you get mood swings, your mind breaks, and you cramp up all over your body. Eventually, your body will start cannibalizing itself, eating away at the fat in your organs and then in your muscles. It takes someone who won't give up in the face of that," he added.